fandomtownies | Furnado Animal Shelter, Tuesday

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Furnado Animal Shelter, Tuesday

Wow, there was a lot of cleanup to do today. The animal shelter had fared pretty decently over the weekend, what with Zack pretty much standing guard over it with a sword and a few good Materia, but the surrounding area was a mess of shark bits and debris from the storm, and the chicken coop had blown entirely away in the wind. Fortunately he'd brought the birds inside before the hurricane had even started, but there was still a lot of work to be done besides.

One of the puppies that Karla had left here was tagging along at Zack's heels today as he pulled plywood back off of windows and did the smelly, heavy work of heaving sharks into a dumpster before going to investigate just how much work was going to be necessary to re-build that chicken enclosure on the roof.

Zack didn't mind when weird creatures attacked the island, but he'd never much been a fan of the cleanup. Why couldn't monsters here just disappear the way they did back home, anyway?

[OOC: Open!]

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After dropping by his own shop, Peter came by to check up on this place. "Hey; how'd everybody make out?" He knelt to let the puppy sniff him.

Zack gave Peter a little smile as he hefted a few pieces of lumber from the windows up onto his shoulder. The puppy quite happily sniffed at the offered hand, little butt wiggling all over.

"Aside from me being nearly flattened by a puppy stampede this morning, not too badly," he replied. "The chicken coop blew away, but I kind of figured when I heard about the wind that there was a chance of that. All the animals seem okay, if a bit spooked. How'd you make out?"

"Some wilted flowers when the power went out, but otherwise good," Peter said. He scritched the puppy behind its ears. "Need any help?"

"There isn't anything here I can't handle," Zack noted, giving Peter a grateful smile, "but it all would go a lot faster if I had a hand. Not that the puppies aren't helping..."

They weren't helping. They were underfoot at the best of times. Adorably so, and the company was nice, but Zack was thankful that only one of them really wanted to tag along with him today for all of this.

"I need to clear out the last of the dead fish and re-build that coop before the chickens start getting too rowdy."

Peter laughed. "They're really helpful, aren't they?" He picked up the puppy and got a face full of enthusiastic dog tongue for his troubles. "Show me to the dead fish and let me know if you want it lifted out or just disintegrated in place."

Zack blinked.

"You can make them do that?"

He was used to monsters disappearing on their own that way, sure, but he had yet to see it happen here.

"It's a little complicated, but yeah," Peter said. "Luckily it's one of those spells that if it doesn't work, it'll just do nothing."

"Huh..." Zack tilted his head a little, and then shrugged, set his armload of lumber against the wall, and then nodded toward the back room. Not that the sharks were back there; it was just the easiest way to get to the back alleyway where he'd stashed them. "That's... cool, actually. Where I'm from, when monsters die they just kind of fade away naturally. I'm still getting used to the ones that stick around."

Okay, so sharks weren't technically monsters. But the situation being what it was...

"I've known a few demonic entities that do that," Peter said. "Mostly they just leave a festering corpse, though."

He followed Zack back to the sharks. "Is this all of them?"

"It is," Zack agreed, as a bunch of other puppies snuffled and sniffed at the cages as he and Peter passed by them. A few cats looked on indifferently, then resumed licking their paws as the alleyway door closed behind the two men and their puppy tagalong. "Not a big fan of the festering corpse thing, personally, but at least you aren't looking at me like I'm crazy when I complain about dead things not just fading away."

So, that was a good start!

Peter laughed. "Well, it's not the usual thing on Earth, no." He scritched the puppy and held it out to Zack. "Take this guy and keep him out of the say?"

"Can do," Zack replied, smiling and holding his arms out to take the pup, who was now wriggling and trying to lick his face instead. "Is there anything you'll need in order to do this?"

Peter shook his head. "Blood is good, but I think I can get plenty from one of these guys. Maybe a jar for it?"

"A jar for shark blood," Zack said, blinking, and then reaching up his free hand to scratch at the back of his neck. "How's a dog bowl, instead?"

They didn't have many jars. They had plenty of water dishes.

"That'd be great," Peter agreed. "Just something so I can collect it and reach in."

"Sure," Zack said, smiling and heading inside for a minute. Not long after he was coming back outside again, dog still in his arms, metallic water dish in one hand. "And here you go. Is that everything?"

"Yeah, thanks." Peter took the dish, walked over to the sharks, found a fairly undamaged one, then took out his pocket knife, cut its throat, put a hand on it, and pushed out a simple spell to make the blood flow freely. It was one of the first things he'd learned.

He stuck the dish under the flow and caught as much as he could, then stepped back and started drawing a rough circle around the pile of sharks. "This'll help contain the magic," he explained. "We don't want anything else disintegrating."

"Makes sense to me," Zack replied, watching with interest. "This is nothing like magic back home, already."

"Anything you can charge magically will work, but we had more blood than salt or iron." Peter shrugged, made sure the circle was complete, then stepped back.

He closed his eyes, concentrated, and muttered words under his breath in one of the tongues of Hell. He sketched a small rune in the air, muttered another phrase, and pushed it out. It floated away from him and landed on one of the sharks. Where it hit, the shark started to dissolve into nothing, being eaten away by golden-red sparks.

Zack wasn't going to point out the large supply of salt they had in the aquarium supplies...

"Oooo," he said, blinking. "It's always kind of more blue-green back home."

The gold-red was a neat touch.

Hey, Peter'd never had fish. Besides, blood was cheaper.

"Yeah?" Peter glanced over, still keeping most of his attention on the sharks as the disintegration spread to the rest of the pile. "The color mostly depends on what sort of magic I'm using."

"Back home, that's the color of the lifestream," Zack replied, shrugging. "When anything dies, it returns to the lifestream. When monsters go, it's a little more, uh, immediate. More glittery? Like they're unraveling into little threads of light. It's really pretty, actually."

"Huh."

Peter kept his eye on the sharks as the last ones finished disintegrating, making sure the magic wasn't going to spread any farther than it should. Fortunately, it finished them up and then petered off, the last few specks drifting up into the air and popping out.

When it was done, he turned back to Zack. "Red is mostly fire and chaos. Green tends to be life, purple is energy. Blue is...containment, mostly, or some of the more complicated spells." He shrugged. "It's not hard and fast, but that's the tendencies, anyway."

"The 'green is life' bit checks out," Zack offered. He set the puppy down and it plodded over to sniff at Peter's toes again. "At least where the lifestream itself is concerned. Otherwise it means magic, usually the elemental stuff. Red is for summons, yellow is for fairly normal skills that someone might not have actually learned before. Blue strengthens other magic, and purple strengthens the user."

He paused, and then kind of blinked and added, "I guess that would all make more sense if I explained how magic back home worked in the first place."

"Same here," Peter said. "We can talk while you rebuild the coop, if you want. I can pass you tools or something - my carpentry's mediocre at best."

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